


Feat of Daring

by bendingsignpost



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Courage, Established Relationship, Fluff, Internalized Homophobia, Kissing, M/M, POV First Person, Past Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-17 19:59:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/871413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bendingsignpost/pseuds/bendingsignpost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Watson!” my friend called. “Come to the window.”</p>
<p>I placed my thumb in my book but did not stand. Years together had taught me his ways, as various and numerable as they were, and I knew the friendly command for what it was: the beginning of some scheme.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Feat of Daring

“Watson!” my friend called. “Come to the window.”  
  
I placed my thumb in my book but did not stand. Years together had taught me his ways, as various and numerable as they were, and I knew the friendly command for what it was: the beginning of some scheme. “What could possibly be out there?”  
  
“Fog,” answered Sherlock Holmes. “And much of it.”  
  
“Of which I am perfectly aware.” It was the reason I had remained home that day. Though my club would have been perfectly habitable, the journey there was not to be envied in such weather. Besides, if I had gone, who would have seen Holmes through his inevitable boredom?  
  
Holmes tutted impatiently. “I am not asking you to look at fog.”  
  
My curiosity piqued, I marked my page and set aside my book. I rose and joined him. He directed his gaze out through the window and I did the same. London sat inside a cloud today. A nearby streetlamp played at the role of the sun but accomplished nothing more than a vague yellow smudge against the grey of water heavy with chemicals and coal.  
  
“Holmes, what am I looking for?”  
  
“A feat of daring,” said he.  
  
My eyebrows rose. “What are you about to do to Mrs Hudson’s window? And it is  _Mrs Hudson’s_ window, as she has reminded us on the past three occasions of replacement.”  
  
“Four,” Holmes corrected, “but the cricket ball was yours.”  
  
“And yet not in use by me at the time.”  
  
“Watson, you mustn’t cling so to trifles.”  
  
I sighed at him. I was very good at it: I had much practice.  
  
Holmes folded his arms and looked loftily away. He was watching my reflection in the glass, I knew, and so must have seen how I looked outside and studied the absolute barrier of the fog. I couldn’t make out the streetlamp, let alone the pavement, and the fog muffled any sound from the street until it was a watery, distant ghost of itself.  
  
Unable to see what Holmes was driving at, I simply shook my head, leaned up and pressed my lips to his. Perhaps love does not bring with it all the patience love requires, but it certainly provides incentives for that patience.  
  
Holmes stiffened against me, and not in the way I preferred. I pulled back an inch to better see his startled blue eyes. My hand settled in its habitual place at his elbow.  
  
“Holmes?” I asked softly.  
  
His eyes darted to the window before returning to my eyes, my mouth, my eyes again.  
  
“The fog is thick enough to hide us.” The need to state such an obvious fact was in itself alarming. “Are you all right?”  
  
“Yes,” said Holmes. His voice was hoarse. He tried again. “Yes.” His voice was stronger, reinforced rather than mended. “I know that.”  
  
“Then what on earth is the matter?”  
  
Holmes looked away from me. It was not very often I saw him ashamed, but it was as if I had whispered “Norbury” to him. I stroked his arm and said nothing more in the face of his already fragile mood.  
  
After much too long a moment, he confessed, “That was the feat of daring.”  
  
“I don’t follow. What was?”  
  
His mouth set in an unhappy line. Tentatively, as if I were an unknown commodity, Holmes lowered his head to kiss me. I wouldn’t call it a good kiss, if only because I know what Holmes is truly capable of. This was dry and uneven, an almost apologetic press of the lips. When I opened my mouth to him, his arm began to tremble beneath my hand.  
  
Appalled, I drew back and immediately reached to pull the curtain shut. He caught my hand. “Leave it,” he said. He did not look at me. If anything, he sought to hide his expression from me, and for good reason. His was the face of a brave man who thought himself a coward.  
  
“It’s very daring,” I belatedly assured him.  
  
“It isn’t and you know it,” said he. “There is no risk of being seen. You see that even plainer than I do. The curtains may be open, but that is of absolutely no consequence.” He continued on in this vein for some time, the earlier drama of his bluster now transferred into self-flagellation. When at last he stopped, he looked at me for confirmation, daring me to deny his cowardice.  
  
I chose my words carefully. I chose my topic even more so. “Is this the first time?” I asked. It seemed a remarkable thing for me to have never noticed, but I imagined it was true. The force of habit had blinded me.  
  
“What?”  
  
“In all these years, is this the first time we’ve kissed with the curtains open?”  
  
“Yes,” said Holmes. His nostrils flared. “You may have done it without a second thought, but do you think I would have made a fuss of it if it weren’t?”  
  
“No,” I said, not giving in to his temper. “But I wouldn’t call it a fuss. I know your fusses.”  
  
Holmes walked away from me with long, unsteady strides. “Watson, get your coat.”  
  
I held firm at the window. “I’m not going outside in this.”  
  
He turned on his heel. “Watson,” he said. Though that was the extent of his argument, it was nevertheless a very compelling one. He was much too agitated for it to be otherwise.  
  
“You propose we go outside?” I asked.  
  
He nodded.  
  
“You propose we go up the street, perhaps? Go for a walk in the park.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“I suppose we might hold hands, then, provided it’s abandoned.”  
  
“Which it will be.”  
  
“Then we would hold hands,” I surmised.  
  
“If you wish.”  
  
“I imagine we might find a small secluded spot with trees dripping on us and the fog choking us where we might huddle, miserable and cold, before we kissed and terrified ourselves into running home.”  
  
“Before I terrify myself, you mean!” Holmes snaps.  
  
“No,” I said, for love did inspire patience, if a limited patience. “Both of us terrified, and cold, and wet, and all of it needless. Put down your coat, Holmes.”  
  
Holmes threw down his coat. He crossed his arms and stood in profile, his face turned away from me. “I am not afraid to love you,” he said.  
  
“I know.” I left the window. I went to him. I reached for his hand and kept reaching until he gave it to me. His fingers trembled in mine.  
  
“Then why am I shaking?” he asked. Holmes, brilliant Holmes, Holmes the logician, asked me this. His words shook with his hands.  
  
“Come back to the window,” I said.  
  
Though his mouth remained in a firm, proud line, he nodded.  
  
I led him, his palm sweating against mine, until we stood once again before glass and the impenetrable fog beyond. “Oh, there. I see it now.”  
  
“What?” he asked. He looked out and found nothing.  
  
I caught his gaze in the glass. “A feat of daring.”  
  
Holmes stared at my reflection before rolling his eyes. He sighed wearily. “Watson, really. You spout the most sentimental nonsense sometimes.”  
  
“I’m about to spout a bit more.”  
  
“Must you?”  
  
“Yes. Hold me.” I turned my back to him and drew his arm about me. His sternum slotted against my spine. His arms fastened over my stomach, and my hands secured them in place. He very nearly set his jaw against my cheek but avoided the smear of pomade on his temple he would have earned for his troubles.  
  
Thus bundled in a far better coat than Holmes had ordered me to fetch, I stood at the window and looked out upon a London which could not look back. Though I kept my eyes on the fog, his remained upon my reflection.  
  
At last, he confessed, “I want to love you outside of these walls.”  
  
I laughed. I shouldn’t have, but I did. “Really, Holmes,” I said. “Do you stop loving me the moment you walk out the door?”  
  
He dug his chin into my cheek. I laughed even harder.  
  
“It isn’t funny,” he said.  
  
I turned in his much loosened embrace. I took his face in my hands in a show of sentiment he abhorred. “Then why is it so laughable?”  
  
Holmes swatted at my forearms until I released him. As if to demonstrate what proper affection was, he caught my hand and gave it a perfunctory kiss. “It’s laughable because it’s absurd.”  
  
“But you are afraid.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Good,” I said. “So am I. I don’t see any point in going out into this mess to try to prove otherwise.”  
  
He scowled, and I let him scowl. Given time, the scowl wandered away on its own.  
  
“As for the window,” I said when I thought it wise, “that’s a very simple matter.”  
  
“Then by all means, explain it.”  
  
“I cannot be afraid in our own home,” I told him. “Not with the doors bolted and the windows fogged over. Perhaps this is foolhardy of me, but I do have your good sense to balance my own. Your judgement is the better, and I’ll trust it.”  
  
“Really, Watson,” Holmes murmured, his voice and eyes lowered in anything but submission.  
  
I nodded. “Should I fetch my coat?”  
  
Holmes meandered away from the window with a great yawn. “Whatever for? It’s loathsome outside.” He sat heavily in his armchair and filched my book. “Go if you like. I won’t be budged.”  
  
I followed him to steal back the book, but I took a kiss much more readily. Regardless of the open curtains, Holmes pulled me onto his lap for a long, sweet moment. I hummed, amused at our position. He pushed me in the side and said, “You’re very heavy.”  
  
“Only compared to a man who never eats,” said I, and he practically pushed me and my book right off his lap. Chuckling, I returned to my armchair, put up my feet, and returned to my reading. Content in our silence, we spoke no more until we retired to bed.  
  
“Leave it,” he said, that and only that. I came to bed without locking the bedroom door. He blew out the light, and we settled down to sleep with nothing more than the natural restlessness after a day spent idle. If he held me harder than he had on previous occasions, it was, after all, a cold and foggy night.


End file.
